A few weeks ago, The New York Observer ran an article called “Nerds of Steel” — suggesting that the “new nerd is a beast” and pointing to celebs like Daniel Radcliffe and Steve Carell as proof. Evidently, the great American geek has gotten bigger and stronger in what appears to be a statistical attempt to garner the attention of the ever-elusive female sex. Is it working? Ha, that’s like asking if pi is finite.

But all joking aside, I think the rather toned study body at Penn serves as further evidence for this phenomenon. Just last Thursday, for example, Pottruck held another annual bench press competition — where University Hospital employee Richard Scarlett put up 425 lbs (!) before growing extremely angry and bursting into flames.

(To put things into perspective, 425 lbs is approximately equivalent to 8 sorority girls.)

Scarlett wasn’t the only standout at the event; College senior Kaelin Ainley put up 95 lbs, the most among female participants, and Engineering junior Michael Provenzano won the sub-150 group by benching 235. Again, the idea is that Penn’s geeks are in the gym while its athletes excel at academia.

This is unlike, say, Penn State — where the only athletes in the library are there for entirely different reasons.

And unlike those at other Ivy institutions, Penn students seem to genuinely enjoy working out. Some us of write lengthy love letters to our spinning classes; others yet desire 24/7 service at Pottruck to accommodate the late-night lifter. Penn is so fit that even the newly-opened Philadelphia Runner — your hot spot for gym shoes and package-revealing running shorts — is doing major business within its first few months of operation. Some might say that we exercise too excessively, but not all of us work for CAPS.

So next time I’m waiting in the makeshift line for a free treadmill, I won’t curse the chick who’s reading Plato while she jogs. Nor will I wonder why the 50 year-old physics professor is riding the stationary bike as opposed to sitting at home, mixing potions and contemplating world domination. After all, if some of us are going to be posing for an erotica magazine in the near future, we might as well look good.

Tags: bench press, spinning, world domination

This entry was posted on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 11:15 am and is filed under Penn, Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.